STELLA Cloughton will be 100 years old on Saturday. A cake is planned, also cards and good wishes are sure to pour in. All Mrs Cloughton has ruled out is a birthday dance: her knee gives her gyp.

Otherwise, you can imagine the retired shopkeeper spinning around with the best of them. Mrs Cloughton loves dancing. If her body were still as sprightly as her mind, there would be no stopping her.

It is astonishing to pause and realise what she has lived through. Not only two world wars, but the Great Depression, the arrival of Perspex, television and nuclear power, the eradication of smallpox and diptheria, the reigns of five sovereigns and the transformation of York from a rural market town into a busy, car-dominated city.

Mrs Cloughton generously agreed to share a century of memories with Yesterday Once More, beginning with her entrance into the world in 1904.

Her father Bill Atkinson was a joiner for the Moorlands estate near Haxby, cycling there daily from the family's Rawcliffe home. "He helped to plant the trees at Moorlands. It was a big country house then," says Mrs Cloughton.

"He had a joiner's shop there and a joiner's shop at Manor Farm in Rawcliffe. He worked there at nights and weekends: he worked very hard."

Bill was a "very, very good father; a very kind father. He enjoyed work, he enjoyed life. Until he was 75 he organised the village dance at Rawcliffe, and he always had a barrel of beer in the pantry at home because our house was near the village hall.

"People used to come and enjoy a pint."

Mrs Cloughton's mother Lily was "a pretty woman, not quite as outgoing as my father, but a very good mother".

Back then, Rawcliffe was a nothing but a village of two farms and five cottages. The middle of three sisters, Mrs Cloughton would walk every day to lessons, first at Skelton School and then at Shipton Street School.

"I didn't like school," Mrs Cloughton confesses. "I think it was the teachers. They were a bit grumpy.

"We had a different teacher for each subject. I'll always remember the history teacher. She was horrible.

"The headteacher, Miss McIntosh, was very nice."

When she wasn't at school she would play with friends. "We were happy enough with hopscotch, playing ball, skipping, playing hide and seek, anything like that."

At Christmas the special treat was a trip to the Theatre Royal pantomime.

Her memories of the First World War are not strong. She learned the Armistice had been signed after a back-breaking day potato picking.

Schooldays were brief then, especially for girls. Mrs Cloughton left at 14. Like many of her sex and generation, her parents chose her job. That is how she ended up as a housemaid at a smart Haxby Road home belonging to one branch of the Rowntree family.

"I'll always remember when I went to Haxby Road a friend of my father's took my luggage on a horse and cart. It wasn't a case, it was a tin box with a lock on."

The work was hard. "You had to get up in the morning, make a cup of tea for Mr and Mrs Rowntree, take it upstairs for them, then lay the breakfast table.

"While they were having breakfast you went upstairs and made the beds, and then whichever room wanted turning out you did them. Then it was practically lunchtime.

"You had a bit of space in the afternoon, then you started on a night waiting at the table for dinner."

She left that household to do the same job at the Burton Stone Lane boarding house for students who attended the York College For Girls.

"It was a really happy place," Mrs Cloughton recalls. "There were five of us and we got on fine. We had good holidays because they had good holidays."

The schoolgirls who did not go home spent the summer in a house in Whitby. Housemaids would take it in turns to spend two weeks with them.

Before television, leisure time was more sociable. Mrs Cloughton learned the piano and would play during church services at the Mission Hall. "We had a radio at home, I remember that. We used to spend a lot of time playing cards, and games such as snakes and ladders."

Big shopping meant a long walk into York city centre.

"York was much different than it is now. We had a big market in Parliament Street, and the shops were better too."

Leak and Thorpe, Marshall and Snelgrove and Grisdales offered personal service that has been lost today, she recalls.

Her work as a housemaid was to end when she married. She met her husband, Charlie, at a dance to celebrate her sister's 21st birthday. Dancing was Mrs Cloughton's favourite pastime, and she went to them all: in the Assembly Rooms, the De Grey Rooms, Copmanthorpe, Askham Bryan. She had plenty of boyfriends ready to accompany her, but Charlie proved to be the one.

They married at Skelton Church in 1931. The vicar told Charlie: "You have got a right bargain there for seven and six."

Charlie was a Dringhouses man, and from 1935 the couple, who were to have no children, ran the newsagents on Tadcaster Road.

Until 1931 the building - now the post office - was a private home. Mrs Cloughton' sister and brother-in-law converted it into the shop and handed it over when they moved on.

Charlie and Stella ran it very much as a team. Mrs Cloughton would be up at 5am to sort the papers, an unforgiving job especially in winter. Later Charlie would take over, and give her a break. The only days the shop closed were Good Friday and Christmas Day, when papers weren't published.

During the Second World War, Charlie was sent abroad to fight and his wife was left to run the business alone. Fortunately, she had help from a couple who were friends of the family, but it was tough.

"Through the war there was rationing of cigarettes and everything, and your customers expected their share. It didn't work out like that. You didn't have the stock.

"I tried to be fair to everybody. When we had fireworks we only let each customer have a shilling's worth in a little bag."

Mrs Cloughton used to particularly enjoy delivering to the soldiers stationed at nearby racing stables.

"I used to fill my basket on my bike with papers. The horses used to know what time I would go. I used to put carrots and all sorts in my baskets for them." The soldiers were lovely, "except for the sergeant".

She had become so used to running the shop, "I was a bit hesitant about handing it over when Charlie came back". But soon they were in partnership again, serving the Dringhouses community.

Mrs Cloughton's husband died about 30 years ago. But she still lives in Dringhouses and has a lot of friends and family around her.

"I'm very lucky," she says. "It's been a very happy life and I have put a lot into it."

Many happy returns for Saturday, Mrs C.

Updated: 09:17 Monday, July 12, 2004